A woman died after a doctor botched a routine procedure, Manchester Crown Court heard.
Dr Isyaka Mamman, believed to be 85, was suspended once by a medical watchdog for lying about his age and was sacked but then re-hired at the Royal Oldham Hospital, where he was responsible for a series of critical incidents before the fatal appointment, Manchester Crown Court heard.
Mamman used different dates of birth and left his previous job after “poor performance”. Maman, from Royton, near Oldham, will be sentenced on Tuesday after pleading guilty at an earlier hearing to manslaughter by gross negligence. The judge told him to be prepared to spend some time in jail.
The court heard that Shahida Parveen, 48, went to the hospital with her husband Hizar Mahmood for a routine bone marrow biopsy as part of an investigation into possible myeloproliferative disease.
Mamman, who is a hematology specialist, received the procedure, which normally takes bone marrow samples from the thigh. Instead, Mamman attempted a rare and “very dangerous” procedure to extract samples from Parveen’s sternum, prosecutor Andrew Thomas told the hearing.
Despite objections from the patient and her husband, Mamman continued to use the wrong biopsy needle, missed the bone and pierced Parveen’s pericardium – which contains the heart – causing fatal internal bleeding.
After Parveen lost consciousness as soon as the needle was inserted, her husband ran out of the room shouting, “He killed her. I told him to stop three times and he didn’t listen. He killed her. A cardiac arrest team arrived at the scene and Parveen was confirmed dead later that day, September 3, 2018.
The court heard that a formal complaint was made to Oldham Hospital in 2015 by a patient who said Mamman had used “excessive force” during a bone marrow biopsy. The patient was assured that Mamman would be placed on light duties in the future and was advised that while the doctor was 70 years old and colleagues felt he should retire, they could not fire him solely because of his age.
Mamman went on to perform another bone marrow procedure that year in which he inserted the needle in the wrong place and left a patient permanently disabled.
Maman qualified as a doctor in Nigeria in 1965 and began working in the UK in 1991. His true age was disputed, the court said, as his birthplace in rural Nigeria had no official birth registration system.
Maman initially said he was 21 when he began his medical training, making him 81 at the time of the fatal accident. However, in 2001, as he approached the mandatory retirement age of 65, he changed his date of birth to October 1947, which would have meant he was 10 years old when he started his medical course.
Defense lawyer Michael Hayton said it was clear Mamman should not have been allowed to continue treating patients, but argued he was “not the only person to blame”. He said: “There has been a grotesque catalog of trust failures since 2015.”
The meeting was adjourned until Tuesday morning.
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